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Monday, September 1, 2014

Immersion Dyeing Method for Cotton

I’ve had some
mercerized cotton yarn kicking around in my stash for what seems like forever,
that I just could not find a use for.
Why….colour of course.

The yarn is all
16/2 mercerized cotton in baby pink and bone….the pink is much too sweet and
the bone was much too, well, old bone looking!A perfect reason to haul out the dyes and have a dye day.

The first task
was making skeins of about between 2-4 ounces each.I love my little cheap and cheerful LacisSkein Holder.I’ve had it for about 25 years and it just keeps on going!

After making all
of the skeins I soaked them overnight in plain water ~ it took overnight
because the bone coloured cotton was very hydrophobic.

We decided to dye
using the Immersion Dye bath Method for ProcionMx, which entailed dissolving
the dye in a small amount of water and adding it to a large container of 105 F
water.

Then immerse the fibre
you are dyeing and add salt, then stir continuously for 15 minutes and then
occasionally for another 15 minutes.

After 30 minutes
you dissolve Soda Ash in a small amount of warm water and add to the bath; stir
continuously for 5 minutes and then occasionally for another 30 minutes.

Take the fibre
out and rinse first in cold water, then raise the temperature to hot. Unlike heat dyeing of wool, not all of the dye is absorbed into the cotton, there will be some dye bleed. Add synthrapol to the final rinse to remove every last speck of loose dye.

Because we were
dyeing 9 skeins, we did it in two separate batches; there was a lot of stirring
when we did 5 at a time!

This fabric was
the inspiration for my dye choices; it’s called Big Blue Poppy!

Here are the
final colours drying in the shade…..finally, colours I can use!

Hi Dianne, although I've never tried to dye linen, it is a baste fibre like cotton, so it should work. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to soak the fibre for a long time to get it really, really wet; but ProcionMX can be used to dye straw for basket weaving, so linen shouldn't be a problem. If you have any trouble finding the Procion in NZ, email me and I'll send you the names of some places that should mail to you.